Now, a bank paying 0% isn't
exactly abnormal in today's banking environment. But what's really
strange is that ANZ actually took out an ad in an Australian newspaper
to advertise this.

Yesterday's page 10 of the Australian
Financial Review (AFR) had a quarter-page ad from ANZ boasting about 0%
interest rates for accounts denominated in number of foreign currencies,
including Hong Kong dollars, Japanese yen, British pounds, and more.

Curiously, in order to qualify for this bargain 0% rate, you have to meet a rather significant deposit minimum.

For the 0% Japanese yen account, for example, you have to deposit 23.5 million yen (currently about $223,000 US dollars).

So basically some manager at ANZ actually thought that paying 0%
interest on substantial account minimums would be an attractive offer...
so attractive, in fact, that they should brag about it in the
newspaper.

This is so completely ridiculous. But it really crystalizes what's wrong with the entire financial system.

We're told to keep our money in banks... that banks are safe. But the objective data tells a completely different story.

Holding money in most banks guarantees that you will lose money.

Adjusting for taxes and inflation, you're losing at least 2% per year,
even if you believe the governments' notoriously understated official
inflation statistics.

This level of absurdity pushes people into riskier and riskier assets, simply in an effort to avoid LOSING money.

Case in point-- the government of Spain recently issued 1 BILLION euros
worth of bonds that yield a paltry 4%. And they're due in 2064.

Bear in mind, Spain is completely broke. And just two years ago the government had to pay 7.5% on ten year notes.

Now people are lending money to the Spanish government for 50 fucking years at just 4%.

This is insane.

But couldn't this insanity last forever? Couldn't the grand wizards of
the financial system continue to engineer one deranged bailout after
another for decades to come?

Possibly. But unlikely.

Right now the US dollar is the world's dominant reserve currency. This
gives the United States nearly total control of the global financial
system.

In order to clear cross-border trade transactions,
foreign banks HAVE to use the US banking system which is controlled by
the US government.

Further, rest of the world must essentially mirror US Federal Reserve policy.

But this power... and insanity... only lasts as long as the US dollar
is the dominant reserve currency. And this is starting to change
rapidly.

China's renminbi is becoming much more widely accepted
around the world for trade settlement; a number of foreign governments
are now holding renminbi reserves and doing deals to promote trade in
renminbi.

Even in the United States, renminbi payment business
increased 327% last year, and the US is now the fifth largest offshore
renminbi settlement center.

It's no secret here, this is happening right under our noses. The financial system IS changing.

People who ignore this trend do so at their own financial peril.

Yet those who understand what's happening and align themselves accordingly stand to make fortunes.

The Weimar Republic's episode with hyperinflation in the 1920s is a great example.

Despite all the warning signs, most people did nothing... and they got wiped out.

A handful of people, though, saw the writing on the wall. They took
steps to safeguard what they had. And they allocated their investment
capital to bet that the currency would collapse.

They were right. And vast fortunes were created in a matter of months.

Throughout history there's always a handful of people ahead of the trend. And they're rewarded for their foresight.

Right now we're in the very early stages of a similar transition,
arguably one of the most important economic transformations since the
Industrial Revolution.

Because of this, opportunities already abound if you know where to look. It's an incredibly exciting time to be alive.

Do you ever look around and think, "This is not the country that I grew up in..."?

Many people are making this realization. They're utterly disgusted by
what they see happening at home. And they feel powerless to stop it.

Think about what's happened just in the past two years:

The US government has brazenly continued its arrogant domestic spying program despite overwhelming public opposition. So much for a government "for the people"...

Banks in Portugal, Spain, Italy, and the UK have begun restricting how much customers can withdraw.

Banks in the United States are now restricting their customers' international wire transfers.

And of course, banks in Cyprus completely froze people out of their accounts.

Everyone from the International Monetary Fund, ANZ CEO Mike Smith to
leading Harvard economists have been calling for capital controls (which
will lock your money inside a failing banking system).

"Wealth taxes" are also being proposed... again by the IMF, as well as several central banks around the world.

Poland nationalized private pension funds last year, and the new US
MyRA program has been set up for you to loan your retirement funds
directly to the US Gov. This is slso happening in Australia and Japan.

Brand spanking new taxes were rolled out in 2014 in the Land of the
Free, including a capital gains tax increase from 15% to 53.8%.

Obama quietly signed an Executive Order that gives Homeland Security
the ability to control and shut down the nation's communications systems
upon the President's request

As of January 10, 2014, 92.5
million Americans were receiving food stamps. That's 29% of the entire
population. And it's double the amount in 2008 when the financial crisis
began.

According to a recent IRS report, "tax requirements
have become so confusing and the compliance burden so great that
taxpayers are giving up their U.S. citizenship in record numbers" The list goes on and on. But the big picture trend is crystal clear: most of the West is in terminal velocity decline.

They have reached the point of no return with respect to their MASSIVE
debt burdens, NO country will be saved, when the house of cards begins
to collapse the entire world will implode and come crashing down.
Greece. Italy. The United States. Japan. They have absolutely no hope of
paying down their debts without resorting to some destructive tactic.

And we're seeing it all unfold in front of our very eyes. Capital controls. Bank withdrawal limitations. Wealth taxes. Etc.

This is what happens when nations go bankrupt. They almost always
resort to plundering their citizens. Deep down, you know it's already
happening.

But there's something critical that most people don't realize.

Most people watch this unfold... and shake their heads in disgust thinking that there's nothing they can do about it.

And it's true, there really is no 'saving' the system.

Look at a situation like here in Japan, where the government is already
spending over 25% of its tax revenue just to pay interest on its
debt... at a time when interest rates are basically zero!

This is not a system that can simply be fixed. There is no adjustment, no lever that can be pulled for a soft landing.

History is generous with examples going all the way back to the ancient
Sumerians through the French Bourbon monarchy-- whenever things get too
far out of control, the system resets itself.

This isn't about fear. It's about facts, uncomfortable as they may be.

We are programmed practically from birth to deny this. We grow up
thinking that the country we live in is " the best country in the world,
and this could never happen here."

Look around. It's not the country you grew up in. And it's already happening in every country on the planet.

Expect to see Scotland win it's independence
back after which a MASSIVE immigration from the rest of the UK, trying
to get away from the feckless, self serving money pit that of
Westminster Politics, the remaining nations of the commonwealth and Union will follow Scotland's lead for Independence. I wish them all the very best! Scotland increases their risk of being hit by a USSA?NATO/EU asteroid if they become independent.

ISIS/ISIL/CIA/NATO/USSA/EU to create an Islamic state in Scotland after they win independence.

Currency WOARS Yen hits 6 year low >105 to the U$D, MASSIVE problem for Germany and EU exporters to Asia. Germanys exports have TANKED.Meanwhile US making EVERY effort possible to push their King dollar off the cliff..

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

The HKD is about to bounce like a frickin' SUPERBALL .Wealth by shitstorm default.. here is my guide on "How to cleanup in the upcoming global shit storm event."Dump all cash savings into HKD into a Gov. Backed Tax free HK account.The
HKD is pegged to the USD, the night before the USD fails your HKD's
will be tied to CNY. Enjoy as the HKD bounces like a fricken SUPERBALL!This way you ENJOY 'wealth by default SHTF event' as long as the game is played.What
we do know is 'reserve currency' is 40 year life average, the USA is
already on 40, from the last 'reset' by Nixon in 1970's.So
the USA is already in ZOMBIE,... its' going to go down, but sadly it
will keep going up until down,... ONLY A LIAR and a FOOL CAN TELL YOU
WHEN.Thus
that's why HKD pegged to USD is smartest, the CHINESE who are paying
the best minds on the planet to WATCH this shit will decouple the HKD
from USD when they're ready to pull the life support.This
way you have the CHINESE 'jews' taking care of your money, and when
they're ready to kill the USD the night before your HKD becomes CNY.'bitcoin' crypto's where supposed to solve this. However bitcoin is NSA, GOOGLE is GUBMINT, ...We NEO-LUDDITES, ... are not anti tech. butt rather anti GUBMINT, not technology.Today it very smart, one can travel the world like a pauper and carry not a thing, not even a credit card,Yet
one can go online, and have money transferred to a new account where
ever one may go,...or simply rip it out via a hole in the wall via an
ATM machine geographically agnostic.The problem with GOLD is they will find it and take it. Same for goes for carrying CURRENCY.Honestly,
if you can find the means of doing so (the info will be available on
any decent forex site), there will be a significant spike in trading
volumes which will be insider money pouring into the HKD. This will
quite likely indicate the imminent decoupling/de-pegging from the USD.
It might be tomorrow, or it might be in the next 3 months, who knows?
The indicators will be quite obvious.Go BIG! and Best of luck to ya'll...

CONTRARY TO WHAT LEFTISTS BELIEVE, PROFIT IS A MEASURE OF HOW WELL A COMPANY SERVES OTHERS AND NOT "GREED"

Why the vast gulf between Left and Right? Why do Leftists live in their own little bubble?

There is a famous anecdote about a journalist (possibly Pauline Kael)
who was amazed at the election of President Nixon. "But I don't know
anybody who voted for Nixon", she said. That bubble again. Wyeth,
an Australian Leftist, spells out at some length how Left and Right
seem to live in two different worlds, with very little communication
between them. Wyeth does not know why, however.

I think the answer is obvious. I think that the separation exists
because the Left has a reflex of closing its ears to anything it does
not want to hear. They do that because their beliefs are so easily open
to challenge. They cannot AFFORD to listen. Reality is against them.
They have to invent a fictional mental world where, for instance, "all
men are equal", despite the perfectly obvious fact that all men are
different. All men are (allegedly) equal only in the sight of God --
and Leftists don't generally believe in him/her.

Global warming is a good example of reality denial too. It is agreed on
both sides of the divide that the total amount of warming over the last
150 years has been less than one degree Celsius. Why is such a
triviality worth notice? Leftists never say. Global warming scientists
theorize that the warming might suddenly leap but that is mere prophecy
-- and we know how successful prophecies generally are.

Conservatives, on the other hand spend most of their time in politics
discussing and refuting Leftist arguments. Read almost anything on
Townhall.com, for instance, and it will be discussing and refuting
Leftist arguments and policies with appeals to the facts -- anything but
ignoring them. By contrast, the fact that Leftists do NOT generally
address conservative arguments is what makes them seem alien to
conservatives. It makes them seem alien to rationality. Leftists very
often mock conservative arguments in a superficial and cherrypicked way
but that is a far cry from seriously working through them and honestly
addressing ALL the relevant facts

For the excellent reason that Right is the opposite of Left, opponents
of the Left are commonly referred to as Rightist -- and that should be
the end of the matter. But it is not. The problem arises from the
expression "extreme right". What is "the extreme right"?

The answer to that has been greatly distorted by Leftist disinformation
about Hitler. Hitler was by the standards of his day a fairly mainstream
socialist. Even his ideas about "Aryans" were shared by such Leftist
eminences as U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. But Hitler's defeat in war
created a desperate need in Leftists to deny all that. So they
invariably describe him as "right-wing" to deflect attention from the
fact that he was in his day one of them. He was in fact to the Right of
Stalin's Communism only -- so the Communist view of Hitler has been
conveniently adopted by the Left generally. See here for full details about Hitler's ideas and background.

So Leftists tend to describe all tyrants and dictators as extreme Right
on the grounds that their behaviour is like Hitler's. But all the great
tyrants of the 20th century -- Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot --
were in fact Leftists so the various postwar tyrants should logically be
called "extreme Leftists" -- though that's not logic that Leftists
like, of course. It's only when a tyrant or a tyranny is clearly
Communist (as in, for example, Peru, Nicaragua and Nepal) that Leftists
will generally desist from calling the tyrant "Right wing". It would
probably be most accurate to say that most tyrants are wingless: They
believe only in their own personal power

So calling conservatives Rightists does little harm when normal everyday
democratic politics is concerned but once we start talking about
extremes of belief a large problem arises. Conservatives reject utterly
the association with Hitler that Leftists try to pin on them.

There is clearly a lot of variation among postwar tyrants so presumably
some are better examples of what Leftists call "right-wing" than others.
The Latin American dictators seem to be prime candidates but what do we
make of clowns like Idi Amin or democratically elected authoritarians
like Lee Kuan Yew? Exactly WHICH dictators are good examples of
"Right-wing" seems to be vague. Leftists appear to have no systematic
thinking on that. So some lists include Fascists like Chiang Kai Shek,
the monarchs of the Muslim world and even in some cases undoubted
Communists like the Kim dynasty of North Korea.

So I too will have to leave vague just who is a good example of an
"extreme Rightist". For the sake of looking at the subject at all, I
will use "Hitler-like" or "Fascist" as a specification of what Leftists
are talking about when they say "Right wing extremist" -- and leave it
at that. I have however given separate coverage of the Latin American
dictators further below. They have mostly been Bolivarists, a form of
Fascism. And that Fascism is/was Leftist I set out at length here.

There are also of course a few individuals around in Western countries
who are Hitler sentimentalists but they are so few and so unorganized
that they are essentially irrelevant to modern politics. I do however
have a discussion of them here.

We are accustomed in political discussions to describe both ends of the
political spectrum as "extremists". But what are the extremes? In the
case of the Left it is easy: Communism. But what is an extreme
conservative? The Left are sure that it is someone like Adolf Hitler but
the logic of conservative commitment to individual liberty and
suspicion of government makes libertarianism a much likelier extreme
form of conservatism.

At this point I am going to skip forward a little, however, and say
where I think people go wrong. I don't think there IS any such thing as
extreme conservatism. Libertarians believe in a lot of stuff that
conservatives reject. But I do believe that there is such a thing as
extreme Leftism. How come?

I think that the whole polarity of politics is generally misunderstood.
The contest between Left and Right is a contest between stability and
the results of irritability/anger/rage. Conservatives are the sheet
anchor of society. They ensure that there is some continuity and
predictability in our lives. They are the anchor that prevents us all
from being blown onto the shoals of arrogant stupidity in the manner of
Pol Pot and many others.

For various reasons most people in society have gripes about it. Even
conservatives can usually give you a long list of things that they would
wish otherwise in the world about them.

But some of the discontented are REALLY discontented -- discontented to
the point of anger/rage/hate -- and among them there is a really
dangerous group: Those who "know" how to fix everything.

So the political contest ranges across a spectrum from valuing stability to various degrees of revolutionary motivation.

But can there be an extreme of valuing stability? In theory yes but I
have yet to hear of ANY conservative-dominated government that lacked an
active legislative agenda. BOTH sides of politics have changes they
want to legislate for. Conservatives don't want stability at any price
any more than they want change that threatens stability. So as far as I
can see, ALL conservatives want change PLUS stability. And mostly they
get that.

Pulling against that anchor that keeps society going on a fairly even
keel, however, there is the Left -- who want every conceivable sort of
change. Some just want more social welfare legislation and some want the
whole society turned upside down by violent revolution. And the latter
are indeed extremists.

So there is no sharp Left/Right dividing line -- just a continuum from
strong support for stability amid change to a complete disrespect and
disregard for stability among extreme advocates of change.

It is possible that there is somebody somewhere in the world who values
stability so much that he/she want NO change in the world about them at
all. If so, I have never met such a person. Everybody has gripes and
change is a constant. The only question is whether we can manage change
without great disruptions to our everyday lives. Conservatives think we
can and should. Leftists basically don't care about that. For them
change is the goal with stability hardly considered.

Now let me skip back to a question I raised earlier. I think we are now
in a better position to answer that question. The question is why do
conservatives and Leftists disagree over what extreme conservatism or
extreme Rightism is? And the answer is now obvious. If it does not
exist, no wonder people disagree over what it is. The theoretical
inference would be that an extreme conservative wants ZERO change:
he/she wants stability alone. But, as I have noted, such people appear
not to exist and if they do exist they are surely too few to matter.

But what about the Leftist conviction that society is riddled by people
like Hitler: "Racists" and "Nazis". Leftists never cease describing
those they disagree with that way. Even a moderate and compromising
Christian gentleman such as George Bush Jr. was constantly accused of
being a Nazi during his time in office.

Again our conception of stability versus extremism helps answer that -- particularly if you add in a dash of history.

The historical origins and modern psychology of Anglo-Saxon conservatism

By John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D. -- version of late 2013)

"Law, language, literature-these are considerable factors. Common
conceptions of what is right and decent, a marked regard for fair play,
especially to the weak and poor, a stern sentiment of impartial justice,
and above all a love of personal freedom . these are the common conceptions on both sides of the ocean among the English-speaking peoples.

-- Winston Churchill's view of what characterizes people of British descent both at home and abroad

Conspectus

This monograph relies on one authority and one authority only: The
authority of history. But I think it may be useful if I pull together
at the beginning what I think history teaches us:

Left-leaning psychologists and other Leftist "thinkers" sometimes
"study" conservatism -- usually with the obvious motive of proving a
theory which discredits conservatives in some way. But the shallowness
of their actual knowledge of conservatives is shown when they feel the
need to consult dictionaries just to find out what conservatism is (e.g.
Altemeyer and Wyeth).
That is a remarkably desperate recourse. Dictionaries record usage
but they cannot tell you whether the usage is right or wrong, shallow or
profound. They even record mistaken usages.

The problem underlying the recourse to dictionaries is that the Leftist
wouldn't know conservatism if he fell over it. His only concept of
conservatism is the caricature of it that circulates in his own little
Leftist bubble. But he does realize dimly that he doesn't know what it
is. So with a schoolboy level of sophistication, he turns to his
dictionary to find out what it is!

By contrast, in my studies of Leftism, I feel no need to rely on
dictionaries. From many years of reading Leftist writings, I can tell
you what Leftism regularly is. The essential element of Leftism is the
desire to change society. That DRIVES Leftism. And society is people.
So What the Leftist does or tries to do is to
stop people doing what they want to do and make them do things that
they don't want to do. They are not alone in that but that
underlies all that they do and say. What changes they want and why they
want them is also a big part of the story and I consider that in
detail elsewhere.
So conservatives tend to allow the natural world to continue on its way
while Leftists forge an inherently unstable world that can be held
together only by coercion. Leftism is quintessentially authoritarian.

The redirection of a large slice of people's spending power via
compulsory taxation is only one part of the coercion. There are also
many direct commands and prohibitions. The very expensive "mandates" of
Obamacare were under much discussion in late 2013. Only a Leftist
would think that old ladies should be forced to pay for obstetric care.

It may be noted that some people with strongly-held religious views tend
to be like Leftists in trying to forge an unnatural world. That helps
to explain why Leftists are infinitely tolerant of Muslim Jihadis and
why the major churches tend to support the Left, some of them being very
Leftist. In the 2004 Australian Federal elections, the leaders of ALL
the churches came out in favour of the (Leftist) Australian Labor Party.
The only exception was a small Exclusive Brethren group in Tasmania
who supported the conservative coalition -- and their "intervention"
sparked huge outrage in the media and elsewhere. (The conservatives won
that election in a landslide).

And in England it is sometimes now held that "C of E" stands for "Church
of the Environment", because of the Church of England's strong
committment to Greenie causes. Cantuar Welby's scolding of business
might also be noted. And a previous Cantuar (Carey, a generally decent
man) called his little grandson "pollution" on Greenie grounds. Pity
the children! And, in stark contrast with the Bible, a senior Anglican cleric has called "homophobia" a sin.
The C of E and most of its First World offshoots no longer have strong
feelings about salvation but they have strong feelings about
Green/Leftist causes.

Because they focus so much on personal feelings and the promise of
salvation rather than on "the world", American evangelicals are
something of an exception but, even there, 10 million evangelicals voted
for Al Gore in the year 2000 American Federal elections.

But back to conservatism: While conservatives tend to let the natural
world run its course, that is not a defining characteristic. Nor is
opposition to change a defining characteristic. What drives conservatism
is something quite different.

What Leftists find in their dictionaries is that conservatives are
opposed to change. That is indeed the prevailing Leftist conception of
conservatives but it ignores one of the most salient facts about
politics worldwide -- that conservative governments are just as
energetic in legislating as Leftists are. Both sides busily make new
laws all the time. And the point of a new law is to change something.
The changes that Left and Right desire are different but both sides push
for change. On the Leftist's understanding of conservatism, a
conservative government that wins an election should do no more than
yawn, shut up the legislature and go home until the next election! What
conservatives mostly do, however, is reverse Leftist initiatives and
STRENGTHEN existing social arrangements rather than tear them down.
Both Left and right want change but WHAT changes they want are very
different and very differently motivated.

What has happened is that Leftists are so
self-righteous that they can rarely accept that conservatives oppose
Leftist policies on the merits of those policies. So they have
successfully put about the defensive myth that conservatives are opposed
to ALL change, regardless of its merits. But those busy conservative
legislators put the lie to that towering absurdity. Conservatives have
NO attitude to change per se. It is Leftists who do. They long for it.

So in a thoroughly anti-intellectual style, the Leftist ignores some of
the most basic facts about politics. That sure is a weird little
intellectual bubble that he lives in. EVERY conservative that I know
has got a whole list of things that he would like to see changed --
usually reversals of Leftist changes. But Leftist intellectuals
clearly just doesn't know any conservatives.

So what really is conservatism? I have taught both sociology and
psychology at major Australian universities but when it comes to
politics my psychologist's hat is firmly on. One can understand
conservatism at various levels but to get consistency, you have to drop
back to the psychological level. And at that level it is as plain as a
pikestaff. Conservatives are cautious. And that is all you need to know to understand the whole of conservatism.

In science, however, explanations just generate new questions and, as a
psychologist, I am interested in dropping down to an even lower level of
explanation and asking why conservatives are cautious. And I think
that is pretty obvious too. It is in part because they can be.

As all the surveys show, conservatives are the happy and contented
people. And with that disposition, conservatives just don't feel the
burning urgency for change that Leftists do. Leftists cast caution to
the winds because they want change so badly. ANYTHING seems better to
them than the existing arrangements. Conservatives don't have that
compulsion. Leftists are the perpetually dissatified whiners whereas
conservatives can afford to take their time and get things right from
the outset.

And why does that difference in happiness exist? As the happiness research often reminds us, your degree of happiness is inborn and, as such, is pretty fixed. Leftists are just born miserable.

So we have now dropped down into a genetic level of explanation. And we
can at that level even derive and test a hypothetico-deductive
prediction. If conservatives are happy and happiness is genetic, then
conservatism should be genetic too. And it is. As behaviour geneticists such as Nick Martin
have shown, conservatism has a strong genetic component -- which
suggests that some people are just born cautious. It is, of course, no
surprise that caution and happiness go together. See also here

So I think I have now gone as low as I can go in explaining
conservatism. There are of course even lower levels of explanation
possible (tracing the brain areas involved, studying the DNA) but our
understanding of those levels of function is so far so crude that
anyone purporting to offer explanations at that level is merely speculating.

So having gone down the levels of explanation, I now need to go up the
levels of explanation too. What does being cautious lead to? It rather
obviously leads to distrust: Distrust of the wisdom and goodwill of
one's fellow man, both as individuals and in collectivities. In
Christian terms, man is seen as "fallen" and ineluctibly imperfect.

But trust and distrust are matters of degree and conservatives are
perfectly willing to give trust when it has been earned. So where
ideas are concerned, conservatives usually trust only those ideas that
have already been shown to work as intended or which extend existing
successful ideas. Leftists, by contrast, trust and put into action
ideas that "sound" right to them -- without bothering to test first
whether their ideas really do generate the consequences that they
envisage. They usually don't of course. Leftists are theorists extraordinaire.
They have no use for Mr Gradgrind's "facts". That theory is useful
only insofar as it is a good guide to facts seems to be beyond their
ken.

The enthusiasm for "whole language" methods in teaching kids to read is
an example of untested Leftist policy being implemented. It was widely
adopted in the schools but worked so badly that most schools have now
reverted to phonics -- the old "tried and tested" method.

And conservative caution leads to conservatives valuing stability
generally -- because sweeping changes could well not work out well --
and usually don't. Leftists usually seem to think they know it all but
conservatives know that they don't. So conservatives may want various
changes but also want to proceed cautiously with change. They want
"safe" change, change off a stable base -- a base that embodies what has
worked in the past.

And the traditional conservative advocacy of individual liberty also
stems from caution. It is highly likely that a tyrant won't have your
particular interests at heart so you want to be free to pursue your own
interests yourself. And in the economic sphere that is capitalism.

One thing you have to understand
about every federal debt-related action: it's not for the benefit of the
borrowers, but for the benefit of the banks. We saw this in 2009 with
"mortgage reform" and it will be the same with "student loan reform":

President Barack Obama is prepping new executive steps to help Americans
struggling to pay off their student debt, and throwing his support
behind Senate Democratic legislation with a similar goal but potentially
a much more profound impact.

Obama on Monday will announce he's
expanding his "Pay As You Earn" program that lets borrowers pay no more
than 10 percent of their monthly income in loan payments, the White
House said. Currently, the program is only available to those who
started borrowing after October 2007 and kept borrowing after October
2011. Obama plans to start allowing those who borrowed earlier to
participate, potentially extending the benefit to millions more
borrowers.

The problem Obama is addressing is that although it is impossible for
graduates (and non-graduates) to formally default on their student
loans, they will effectively default on them when they simply don't have
the money to make their payments.

This is simply reducing the payments in order to keep them on the hook
longer and thereby prevent the loans from being correctly recognized as
bad loans that have to be written off. As Karl Denninger correctly
ascertains, the ultimate goal is to keep the
young borrowers on the hook, but force taxpayers to pay off their
loans. It about the banks not the borrowers. It's ALWAYS about the
banks.